sichuan green beans

I’m not very good at mise en place. I know that isn’t a sign of a particularly good cook, but I must be getting better lately because the kitchen isn’t so messy when I’m done cooking. I didn’t do a good job with this recipe though. I read “cook beans for 5-8 minutes” and I think Perfect! I’ll have just enough time to mince garlic, chop ginger, get the pork out of the fridge, measure out 3 liquids and 5 powders for the sauce, and slice the scallions! While stirring frequently. Dork.

Sichuan green beans was one of my favorite meals to make when I lived alone, and I still make it fairly often for me and Dave. It’s a quick, easy, balanced, healthy one pot meal. The recipe (according the Cooks Illustrated article) is based on a traditional Chinese meal involving deep-fried green beans. This recipe gets the same effect with just a couple tablespoons of oil over very high heat. The beans are cooked until they’re shriveled and blackened. It sounds like they’d be overcooked and soggy, but I swear they’re not. They’re crisp and sweet. It’s similar to what you get when you roast vegetables.

I did a quick scan on the internet of similar recipes, but I can see immediately that they’re not going to get the same sweet crunchiness out of the green beans. One steams the beans separately, one adds water to the pan to steam/boil them in the pan, one sautés them for a few minutes over medium heat. Bland (and extra work and dishes), boring, raw. No good. The high heat searing is necessary to get the most flavor out of the beans. I tried using Chinese long beans for this recipe once, but I actually didn’t like it as much. Besides costing far more than regular green beans, they weren’t as sweet.

The rest of the recipe is no problem. Cook some ground pork, add garlic and ginger, stir in some sauce ingredients, serve over white rice. You can leave the pork out and add shiitakes instead. This would make a nice side dish, but doesn’t have any protein source for a full meal. Either way, just make sure you do your chopping and measuring before you do your cooking. Otherwise you’ll be scrambling around like a dork, like I was.

Stir-Fried Sichuan Green Beans (from Cooks Illustrated January 2007)

Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course

CI note: To make this dish vegetarian, substitute 4 ounces of shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and minced, for the pork. If using mushrooms, you will need to add a teaspoon of oil to the pan in step 3 before adding the mushrooms. The cooking of this dish goes very quickly, so be sure to have all of the ingredients prepped before you start. Serve this dish with steamed white rice.

1. In small bowl, stir together soy sauce, sherry, sugar, cornstarch, white pepper, pepper flakes, mustard, and water until sugar dissolves; set aside.

2. Heat oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until just smoking. Add beans and cook, stirring frequently, until crisp-tender and skins are shriveled and blackened in spots, 5 to 8 minutes (reduce heat to medium-high if beans darken too quickly). Transfer beans to large plate.

3. Reduce heat to medium-high and add pork to now-empty skillet. Cook, breaking pork into small pieces, until no pink remains, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and ginger; cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, 15 to 20 seconds. Stir sauce to recombine and return beans to pan with sauce. Toss and cook until sauce is thickened, 5 to 10 seconds. Remove pan from heat and stir in scallions and sesame oil. Serve immediately.

Mmm. I want to make this for supper now! I like your story about thinking you’d have enough time to do all the prep work while the beans are cooking! I’m doing that all the time too. How much multitasking can I get done at once! Good tips about the green beans and searing.

Made this tonight and it was delicious! What a great recipe, and definitely a keeper for my repertoire. I think I’m going to try it with the mushrooms sometime soon, too, to make it meat-free for my weeknights!